


She Is No Icarus

by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Canon Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Quick Bright Fic, References Helen's children, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:40:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29076480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_world_of_beautiful_monsters/pseuds/This_world_of_beautiful_monsters
Summary: Helen of Troy is the daughter of Zeus, who impregnated her mother in the form of a swan. Here's what that might mean.
Relationships: Helen of Troy/Menelaus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Helen of Troy/Paris (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	She Is No Icarus

The feathers start to sprout from her back somewhere around the third year of the war, soft white things that blend into Helen's delicate skin form a distance. She runs her hands down her back and thinks of the swan that raped her mother Leda, of the fractured blue pieces of the shell from which she emerged.

Paris likes the softness at first, but frowns when he first feels twin bulges in her back. He orders her to get rid of them and when she says no he slinks off in a tantrum, one of many. In the night he comes to cut them off and she shoves him away with inhuman strength.

Helen doesn't know why the strength took so long to appear, doesn't know why it didn't protect her from the men who brushed their hands over her skirt and hair as a child or fought over her as a slighter older child. Doesn't know why she didn't have wings to fly away when Paris dragged her from her home and pinned her to a bed, brought her to a place where no one would help her, where the only person who believed that she didn't want to be there was the mad prophetess.

She cried for her children, she wept and clawed to no avail, she waited, she worried. She tore at herself with her glass dagger as gold-flecked blood dripped down her wrists, leaving marks for her husband to tactfully ignore...and then, one day, things started to change.

Helen eats more, feels her bones growing thinner. Her hair grows paler, drifting around her face in pale wisps. People stare at this new form of beauty, but she doesn't care. She walks with her hair unbound, her gown bulging noticeably in the back.

The day the wings split from her back she screams in pain, then joy. They crash around the room, upsetting her loom and vanity, creating a racket like no one has ever heard. Paris runs in, sword in hand, and she breaks his spine with a single blow.

Helen steps out the window and learns to fly in the space between heartbeats, wings pumping and flapping, inhuman blood singing in her veins. She soars above Troy, drawing shocks and screams or surprise. She draws a smile from Cassandra in her room, who waves goodbye, free in her mad honesty.

The battle grinds to a halt as she swoops overhead, even the gods freezing in her places. Helen feels her father's eyes burn into her skin and smirks to herself, defiant. She will never play a pawn for any man, not ever again, and she has the power of the Sky King holding her aloft.

She soars into camp and makes her way through the tents, women and children scattering before, wings folded neatly at her back. Menelaus staggers out of the sent, half-naked, and she can smell the scent of sex from within, recognize the humiliation in his eyes. She doesn't care.

"I'm going home," Helen tells him, voices raised to carry through the camp. "I want you all to give up this ridiculous farce of a war and follow me back, or face the consequences." She couldn't take them all in a battle, of course, but they don't know that. All they know is that the face which launched a thousand ships has wings now, has strength no mortal should have.

Helen earned the divine fire in her eyes with fear and suffering, with the trauma and self-loathing and loneliness. She will keep earning it in the hard days ahead, as she works and _works_ to earn her lost children's trust again (trust that would have disappeared completely if she'd been kept away for a decade, lost opportunities withering to dust in her hands).

She soars aloft again and watches, waits, a threatening wonder above their heads. She watches them slip away, Menelaus in the lead. Perhaps he'll try to punish her when they get home; he'll lose. Perhaps he'll try to get keep her from her children, keep her from giving nurturing their gifts, keep her from fighting to make her daughter strong and her son good; he'll lose. Perhaps he'll try to kill her; he'll lose.

A thousand ships follow her home, winging into the sunset, and for the first time in a long time Helen feels truly beautiful.


End file.
